Bennett says Kansas City is a viable option

After recently floating Las Vegas as a possible new home for the Sonics and Storm, team owner Clay Bennett this week popped by Kansas City and said that city is on his list, too.

Bennett called Kansas City a "viable" option that will be "fully considered" should the Sonics and Storm leave Seattle, according to The Kansas City Star. He was in the city Monday speaking at a luncheon billed as "If You Build It, Will They Come?" sponsored by an economic-development group.

Kansas City, which lost the Kings to Sacramento in 1985, has spent recent years trying to recapture professional basketball. By October, the city expects to complete construction on a $276 million arena, the Sprint Center, but has yet to land a team to play there.

In an interview with The Seattle Times last week, Bennett said he was pessimistic about getting an arena deal that would allow the Sonics to remain in Washington state and he'd begun exploring other markets.

He was more blunt in Kansas City, complaining about the blasé reaction from Seattle fans when the Legislature refused to act on an arena plan.

"No hue and cry, no letters to the editor, nothing by the media or talk on the call-in shows, or no new ideas on how to get it done," Bennett told the Star. "No private ideas on the table."

Bennett has said he'll continue to search for an arena solution in Washington state, and he told The Star "we're going to do everything we can" to get a public vote in August on an arena proposal. Such a vote now seems unlikely because there are no plans to call the Washington Legislature into a special session.

Lawmakers, citing a lack of public support, declined to vote last month on a proposal to provide tax money for a $500 million Renton arena.

Bennett has said if he doesn't get an arena deal by Oct. 31, he'll look to move the Sonics and Storm after the 2007-08 season. It has been widely assumed that the teams would head to Oklahoma City, the hometown of Bennett and other investors who paid $350 million for the teams last year.

But Bennett lately has clouded the picture by suggesting other cities as possible homes.

Last month, he told a group of Seattle business leaders that he was interested in Las Vegas because it could prove more lucrative than Oklahoma. Bennett backpedaled from those comments after a rebuke from NBA commissioner David Stern, but he said the Sonics will consider several options if they leave Seattle.

Tim Leiweke, president of AEG, which will manage the Sprint Center in Kansas City, told the Star, "we're talking to Clay, I'll leave it at that."

If the Sonics move, "the odds-on favorite is Oklahoma City," Leiweke said. "That said, Kansas City is in the mix."

Seattle-area developer Dave Sabey has recently floated the idea of a combined convention center and basketball arena on a 55-acre parcel he acquired in Tukwila. But both Bennett and Sabey say there are no current plans to develop an arena there.

Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com